


Cigarettes

by starsandgraces



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 15:58:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgraces/pseuds/starsandgraces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Chekov, cigarettes and home are two inseparably tangled concepts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cigarettes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withthepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthepilot/gifts).



> Beta'd by [withthepilot](http://withthepilot.livejournal.com/).

Chekov has only known a few people in his lifetime who smoke. As a child, his grandfather smoked thin roll-ups (as a consequence of a much lower demand for tobacco than there had been two or three hundred years before, it was difficult for most people to obtain enough). He tries smoking, once, after his grandfather dies, but while the smell is right and makes everything seem briefly better and as if grandfather was just sitting around a corner, it's not the same. He chokes down the rest of the cigarette and pockets the lighter his grandfather left him.

Even when he comes to America to study at Starfleet Academy, there seems to be the general opinion amongst his peers, or the group that amounts to his peers, that smoking is a waste of money and lung tissue. He doesn't even see people smoking at the few parties he attends, and he'd always assumed that drinking and smoking went hand in hand. Maybe not in this foreign land; maybe only at home.

On his days off, Chekov likes to get himself lost in the backstreets of San Francisco (deliberately—he is a navigator, after all). One day in his first summer there, he finds himself outside a tiny store that looks as if it's been closed down for centuries, judging by the state of the window and the vague impression of dust he can see when he tries to peer through the filthy glass.

But then he spots movement, a man taller than himself inside, and he realises the faded sign on the facade of the shop says "Tobacco", so he pushes open the door and enters. The man is smoking and Chekov gapes at him for a minute, eagerly inhaling the smell of home.

"What do you want, kid?" the man asks, not unkindly, as he puts the cigarette down on an ashtray. "You know I can't sell you any of this, not legally." Chekov nods, but he holds out his Starfleet ID, the one that proves he's as good as an adult in spite of his age. "Well. That's something else, then. But you didn't get it from me if anyone at the academy finds out, you understand?"

Chekov nods again and, not quite trusting himself to speak, points at one of the packets on the wall behind the counter. The shop doesn't seem to have any loose tobacco and rolling papers, so the box he picks is one of pre-rolled cigarettes. The man gets it down for him, puts it into a plain bag, and Chekov pays and leaves quickly, clutching the bag to his chest as he runs all the way back to his dorm room.

He loses his virginity at sixteen to a man who smokes. Chekov doesn't often go to parties—though not for lack of invitations—but this one is for a friend's birthday and so he agrees to go for a short while. He doesn't know if the man is a cadet or a townie; he doesn't even know his name, but he's standing in the corner of the room smoking the same brand of cigarettes that Chekov bought that day and he looks right at Chekov as he inhales deeply.

Chekov sucks his cock inexpertly in the bathroom before they fuck on a pile of coats in someone's bedroom. They share another cigarette afterwards and then they never see each other again. Some nights, Chekov lights up a cigarette and smokes it as he jerks off, fucking his hand and imagining it and the smell of smoke belong to someone else.

He thinks of the man briefly when they finally get back home after Nero's attack on Vulcan and everything else that happened; wonders if he was a cadet after all, wonders which ship he'd been assigned to. Hopes he died quickly and painlessly if he was out there.

When the damage to the _Enterprise_ is repaired and they leave on their five-year mission, Chekov takes a new pack of cigarettes with him, smuggled aboard wrapped in an oversized sweater. Technically, regulations don't forbid the possession of cigarettes, but without a specific override from either the captain or the first officer, any kind of concentrated heat like a lit cigarette or candle in someone's personal quarters will set off the ship's fire suppressants. Chekov figures out how to override that setting within three days of being assigned his quarters, but mostly he's happy just knowing the pack is safely locked in one of his desk drawers, keeping the smell of home within easy reach when home is so far away now.

Sulu comes by sometimes after their shift and they sit on the spare bed in Chekov's quarters ("No one on my bridge crew has to share quarters unless they want to," Kirk had told Chekov, clapping him on the shoulder, but Chekov isn't stupid and he knows that the only reason he doesn't have to share a room is that the ensign assigned to be his roommate was diagnosed with PTSD after the _Narada_ incident and was medically discharged, and there weren't enough graduating cadets left after so many deaths to replace him), talking quietly about home and their families. Sometimes they play chess and sometimes they play cards.

Sulu tells Chekov about the poker games Captain Kirk hosts once in a while, and promises to see if he can get him an invitation if he wants one. Chekov tells Sulu about the engineering project he's working on with Scotty. They're trying to decrease the time it takes to lock onto someone's signal before they can be beamed aboard the ship. Chekov still has nightmares sometimes about losing Spock's mother when she was so close to safety, and he wants to do everything he can to make sure that never happens again.

Eventually, he starts to look forward to Sulu's visits. When the captain gives Sulu permission to start working in the botany lab and it begins eating up his free time, Chekov misses him. He goes to the lab sometimes to watch Sulu with the plants, but it isn't the same and even though he's welcome there as long as he doesn't touch anything, it doesn't take long before he stops going.

He gets a chance to go on an away mission when they're about five months out. It's routine: an exploration of an uninhabited planet with an eye to establish a colony there. And much to Chekov's surprise, knowing their track record, it stays routine. Nothing goes wrong, no one is taken hostage, injured or killed and the planet really is uninhabited and suitable for colonisation.

Chekov's second away mission comes a few weeks later. This one does not go as well. About five hours into exploring the supposedly primitive planet they come across a large number of hostile aliens who definitely shouldn't be there, though Chekov supposes they could be visitors as well. However they got there, they don't seem to appreciate the away team stumbling across them, and one of the security officers is killed and Kirk is injured before anyone else even realises what's happening.

The first Chekov knows of it is that Kirk is standing directly in front of him when he wasn't before, and then he's falling back onto Chekov and he's _bleeding_ and Chekov doesn't even stop to think about it when he sets his phaser to kill and blasts the bastard that shot his captain—would have shot _him_ if Kirk hadn't jumped in front of the projectile. He hooks one arm around Kirk's chest, pressing his hand over the wound in his shoulder and dragging him back into the forested area. The captain is heavier than Chekov anticipated and he stumbles a few times before someone else in the team—one of the junior doctors, Chekov thinks, but he can't remember his name—realises what he's trying to do and supports Kirk from the other side.

"Keptin," Chekov says urgently when they find somewhere safe to stop, propping him against a tree and pressing both hands over the wound. The blue-shirted officer digs through a bag he has with him, looking for bandages. Kirk moans faintly in pain, but when he looks up at Chekov his eyes aren't glazed. "Why did you do that?"

Kirk actually winks at him. "Gotta protect my crew, Chekov," he says, his heavy breathing the only sign that something's wrong.

Chekov glances across at the doctor, who indicates he should move his hands away from Kirk's shoulder while he waves a tricorder at it. "He's going to be okay, it didn't hit anything important," he says, slapping the bandages over the wound and checking the seal. "Doctor McCoy isn't going to be happy with you, Captain."

"Bones'll be fine," Kirk says with a wince as he closes his eyes, "he lives for this stuff."

But Bones' reaction is going to have to wait because the _Enterprise_ , of course, can't be raised. She's on the other side of the planet while the geologists and astronomers examine the planet's binary moon system. They came down on a shuttlecraft, but their enemies are between it and the away team and Chekov is pretty sure that they're outnumbered.

The doctor pulls Chekov aside. "Kirk's going to be okay for now," he says quietly. "But if we don't get him back on board the ship soon, he's going to start trying to move around and that bullet in his shoulder is going to do more damage." Chekov feels sick. If Kirk hadn't jumped in front of him, he wouldn't be in this situation. If Chekov hadn't come on the mission, none of this would have happened.

In the end, of course, everything is okay. Kirk isn't the youngest captain in Starfleet's history for nothing, and even wounded he manages to get them back to the _Enterprise_ with no further loss of life. They all pick up more than a few scrapes and bruises, though, and arrive in sickbay somewhat the worse for wear. Chekov's bloody knuckles and two cracked metacarpals are easily fixed, but nothing anyone says can make him feel better about getting his captain shot.

When Chekov is discharged, he immediately hacks into the ship through the access panel in his quarters, disables the fire suppressants and smokes three cigarettes in a row, clutching a dish to his chest to catch the ashes in. He's finishing the third when his door chimes and he panics, throwing it into the garbage chute and trying to turn on the air filter at the same time. "Coming, coming!" he calls out, flapping his hands around in an attempt to disperse the smoke faster.

The door slides open and Sulu is standing on the other side. "Are you okay?" he asks, raising an eyebrow in a passable impersonation of Spock when he sees Chekov's flushed, guilty face.

"Yes," says Chekov, standing back to let him in and praying the smoke is all gone. "I was exercising."

Sulu looks at him in disbelief, but he comes in anyway and sits down on Chekov's bed. "I thought you might want to talk about the mission. You know, if you want to." Chekov pulls a face as he sits down next to him, and Sulu laughs. "Yeah, okay."

"Do you want to play chess tonight?" he asks, but Sulu isn't listening.

"Can you smell smoke? I can—Pavel, do you _smoke_?" Chekov opens his mouth to deny it, but Sulu is still talking. "How are you managing to smoke on the ship without getting caught?" He starts looking around the room and Chekov realises, too late, that he never hid the packet of cigarettes.

"Hikaru," Chekov starts.

"Can I have one? You got a light in here?" Sulu interrupts, taking one out of the packet without waiting for an answer. Chekov blinks and holds out a box of matches to him, watching as Sulu lights the cigarette and inhales deeply, blowing out the smoke with a sigh. "Fuck," he says in relief. "I haven't had a smoke in six months. You have no idea how much I needed that."

"You smoke?" he asks stupidly, staring at Sulu's mouth.

"I quit. Technically."

"You don't look as if you have done a very good job of it." Chekov tries to sound severe in an attempt to hide how incredibly turned on he is by the sight of Sulu sucking in the smoke so needily.

Sulu just laughs. "No, I guess not." He exhales slowly, watching the smoke spiral up and twist out of view into the ship's ventilation system. They sit in silence for a while, then Sulu says, "You could have died today."

"I know."

"No, _really_. I heard what those weapons did to Kirk's shoulder."

"The keptin will be fine," Chekov says.

There is a long pause. "Right," Sulu answers eventually, stubbing his cigarette out on the dish filled with ash. "Thanks to you."

"It is my fault Keptin Kirk was injured in the first place. If he hadn't needed to protect me, everything would be different." Chekov looks down stubbornly at his hands.

"I thought we agreed not to talk about that sort of thing any more," Sulu says. "You can't second-guess yourself like that all the time. You were on that planet and what happened happened. You just have to do the best you can with what the situation gives you, and you did. That's all anyone can do."

"Hikaru," Chekov says again, and when Sulu turns to look at him he closes the distance between them, kissing him hard. Sulu's hand comes up to grip Chekov's bicep but he doesn't pull away, so Chekov cups the back of his neck and licks into his mouth, pushing his whole body against Sulu as he tries to kiss the taste of nicotine away.

Sulu's hands settle briefly on Chekov's hips before they slide under the back of his sweater and stroke up his spine. Chekov shudders and exhales harshly over Sulu's mouth, and he doesn't really notice how it happens, but all of a sudden his trousers are off and he's in Sulu's lap, rubbing himself against his stomach wantonly. Sulu keeps one hand on his back and moves the other between them to wrap his fingers around Chekov's cock, squeezing gently with each stroke.

"What do you want?" Sulu whispers, and Chekov doesn't know anything right now, so all he can do is make a strangled noise and kiss him again, thrusting into his hand more urgently. "Pavel, Pavel," Sulu says, just before he takes his hand away and pushes Chekov out of his lap and onto the bed again. "Are you a virgin?" Chekov shakes his head and tries to get back into Sulu's lap, but Sulu pushes him down until he's flat on his back. He leans over to look through the drawer in Chekov's nightstand, pulling out a small tube and coating his fingers with its contents before pressing them up between Chekov's legs, circling his fingertips teasingly over his entrance.

Chekov says something like, " _Hngh_ ," and tries to push onto Sulu's slick fingers, fisting his hands in the sheets for leverage. He's grateful when Sulu doesn't waste time and begins preparing him quickly but carefully. When Sulu pauses to strip out of his clothes, Chekov takes the opportunity to pull his sweater off as well, eager for more skin-to-skin contact.

Before Sulu lies back down on top of him, he pushes Chekov's legs further apart and props his hips up with a pillow. "Pavel," he mumbles against the skin of Chekov's throat as he positions himself between his legs, starting to press into him slowly.

"Hikaru, more," Chekov says to the ceiling, gripping the back of Sulu's neck and digging his nails in just slightly. Sulu grunts and bucks into him, holding onto Chekov's hip tightly when he starts thrusting.

He splays his fingers across Chekov's stomach, deliberately not touching his cock, and Chekov whimpers faintly, arching beneath his hand and rocking his hips back into the thrusts. He hooks one leg around Sulu and the new angle is just enough for Sulu's cock to brush his prostate each time he moves, making Chekov tense up as he gets closer. He tries to tell Sulu not to stop because he thinks he'll die if that happens, to keep going and to keep going _harder_ , but the only thing that comes out is some kind of mixed-up, slurred Russian/Standard nonsense.

Sulu seems to understand it, though, because he wraps his hand around Chekov's cock and jerks him quickly, grinding their hips together. Chekov bites his lip hard to hold back a shaky cry, trying to press into Sulu's hand and back onto his cock at the same time as he starts to come in spurts between them.

He feels rather than hears Sulu's answering moan as he shudders and comes as well, slowly curling his fingers around Chekov's shoulder and pressing as close to him as he can. They both lie very still, breathing heavily, and after a long moment Sulu shifts to pull out carefully while Chekov manages to catch his breath enough to tell the computer to turn out the lights.

They lie together in the dark and breathe each other in, all sweat and sex and cigarettes, and Chekov thinks this might be home after all.


End file.
